Tag Archives: Japan

We were in Kyoto during Gion festival time. The Gion festival runs over weeks and embraces two parades as well as numerous smaller events, nights of street carnival, days with observances to be made, blessings to be received, shrines to be moved from place to place–and so much more. Some of the preparations were of course mundane, as in the case of this banner, placed in preparation for a neighbourhood to build its float and then fundraise for the maintenance of its neighbourhood float and celebrate in style. One night we came past this banner and there were matching koi t shirts for sale as well as food and drink.

These are not just any old floats. They are kept in pieces in the neighbourhoods they represent throughout the year, assembled on the street and displayed, and then paraded through the streets. They are part of a tradition centuries long, and many parts of the floats, as well as the treasures that decorate them, have long histories. Many are assembled as they always would have been, with heavy wooden structures held together with ropes made of plant fibres.

Some are very large and some relatively small, and almost all now dwarfed by buildings standing in the streets, while in photos I saw in museums–you can see these floats towered over the city buildings even at the time photography had come into existence. Surely when these floats originated, they would have towered over every building in the city.

Because of the heat, I walked past groups of men building these structures and intermittently lying down in the shade to rest. Every single part of the float has significance–historical, local, spiritual, literary. The interpretive signs that were eventually erected for the ignorant (such as me) offered a small introduction to stories about what the float represented and the way this might be changing though time.

The balcony you can see in each large float is a space for the Gion Bayashi musicians to sit and perform during the parade. As we walked in the still very warm evenings, we came upon rehearsals of Gion Bayashi musicians which we could hear from the street and sometimes see through an upstairs window. Eventually we came across a rehearsal in the float itself.

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On one of my first few days in Kyoto, I went to the Kyoto Goen National Gardens and the Kyoto Imperial Palace, which is set within them. On my way there, I walked past the Goo Shrine.

At this stage I had not yet understood that I would see shrines everywhere I went. This one caught my eye because of all the statues of boar. I was immediately puzzled. Clearly in my mind a wild boar is only ever a threat. I soon came to understand that fearsome, potentially lethal beasts can protect you from your enemies! This was a whole new thought for me, generated at this shrine which commemorates a wounded warrior who escaped his pursuers with the help of 300 wild boar, and was healed by a miracle.

I walked on to the Imperial Palace in its immense grounds. First there came the Muku Tree, beside which an ancestor was killed many, many years ago. I loved the fact that this tree was the thing being commemorated, and was astonished by the way the tree was being supported. And there it stands, right by the Imperial Palace.

It was a punishingly hot day in which I took much less pleasure in this wide stretch of gravel with no sign of shade, than I might otherwise have done. But the imposing scale of the Palace is undeniable.

Some parts of the Palace were inaccessible because they were under repair or renovation. In Kyoto it was always evident that the past is constantly under repair. Nothing is exactly as it would have been hundreds of years ago. In many cases entire buildings have been completely rebuilt after fire, flood or war, in this country where fire has been such a major issue for so much of human history. When we were there flooding was extremely recent, with many loves and homes lost. Typhoons were coming, and we sat through a small earthquake in Tokyo.

The gardens were spectacular and so were the exteriors of the buildings, which eviently contain major works of art I didn’t have the chance to see.

The sculpting and protection of trees and shrubs was very striking here too. In the image below right you can see a tree entirely supported by a circular structure. Should you wonder whether I come from a culture in which this is done–I cannot find an English word that could describe this structure and the closest practice to this I can think of would be espalier–or perhaps creating a hedge.

And there you have it–another world heritage listed site from Kyoto full of beauty and wonder.

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I have belatedly realised that I didn’t start my account of our trip to Japan at the beginning. We began with a day, just one, in Tokyo. Of course, we could see little in this time, but how amazing to be in Tokyo at all! My beloved’s internet hivemind of global travellers had said that the fish market was the place to see. So we were booked into a hotel right on the edge of the market. I didn’t realise my beloved had cunningly planned this, so was delighted and surprised when we came out of the hotel right onto the edge of the part of the fish market that was out on the nearby streets.

Crowds of people, cooking on the street, and stalls with all manner of things from vegetables and pre-cooked food to knives and dishes. And fish, of course. I even saw dried, smoked fish being shaved into bonito flakes.

I can see from my photos that I was taken by Japanese-style cuteness right from the start… and that I felt I couldn’t take pictures of all. the. things. So many amazingnesses!! I know what it’s like to have people photographing everything in the central markets in my home city. And a friend who grew up in Taiwan has since informed me that for any person from China, a fish market would be the obvious place to see in a new city.

Eventually, we left the fish market and I followed my bold beloved onto the train system. Needless to say, unfamiliar plants and places and things were everywhere. I couldn’t get over these capsule stations, full of weird and wonderful things. This display was in a department store, in a stairwell or corridor.

After some wandering about in a shopping district, we took a break in a beautiful park.

We had to investigate what “pachinko and slot” was (as it is advertised all over the place and in very big buildings). I have since read Pachinko by Min Jee Lee, which is more of a multi generational account of Korean immigration in Japan than it is an account of pachinko–but pachinko is a low-end form of gambling that is a little like pinball. It is very loud and accompanied by the smell of cigarette smoke, so far as we could tell at first sight, and apparently a predominantly a male occupation.

We had a very funny experience of being in a shop in the geek district of Tokyo and being hailed by an Australian friend of my beloved. Just so we’re clear–Tokyo itself has a population almost the size of the entire country of Australia. And–the pictorial signs of Japan were gratefully received by me with my pitiful Japanese, but they also have a very different aesthetic to Australian signage. This one I especially enjoyed. I held onto my hat.

And then we had to travel to Kyoto. There had just been major flooding in Japan, not far from Kyoto, so we were lucky to be able to catch the train at all. Some of my beloved’s students had arrived early and been evacuated along with locals, and others had struggled through travel rearrangements made necessary by damaged rail lines and roads. While we didn’t catch the fastest train Japan has to offer, it was still very fast by Australian standards. And very clean and lovely too. All the signage inside the carriage (about the next stations and such) was in at least three languages–more gratitude from me.

I spent the time taken to travel out of Tokyo marvelling over its size and density. Oh, and knitting a sock.

Once we left Tokyo and were in more rural areas, I was amazed to see rice growing all the way up to the train line. I don’t know why, exactly, as wheat grows up to the train line in Australia. But even seeing rice growing is pretty amazing to a person from such a dry place. People live right up against the major inter city train lines too, and there were market gardens all the way to the train line that we passed. We passed Mount Fuji in the distance too.

Even just being on the train made vivid why so many lives and homes are lost in floods, typhoons and mudslides in Japan–people live very densely by comparison with Australia. The heartbreak and trauma of the flooding just before we arrived was plain even through the language barrier on Japanese TV news each night. And for the train buffs, here is a view of the train from the front, most unlike any Australian locomotive I’ve encountered. Much faster and much quieter too!

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Nijojo Mae (Castle) is a World Heritage Site in Kyoto. As it happened, it was walking distance from the place we were staying, so it was my first stop in my walking tour of Kyoto. I live in a country where people have been living for thousands and thousands of years. Yet they lived lightly on the land, and in ways that shared resources far more equally than the historical powers of Asia and Europe. So, to me, it is always amazing to be in a bus travelling along a big street in a modern city and encounter a massive monument dating back hundreds of years (in this case, to the 1600s). This watchtower (above) stands on one corner of the Nijojo Mae.

The Castle has a long and complex history both in terms of the flows of power that led to its creation and subsequent modifications, and of the nature of its buildings. It has two immense circles of fortification–two moats, two circles of earthen walls with supporting structures of wood and stone.

In addition, it has beautiful and extensive gardens, some of which would have been for practical use–cherry groves and other fruiting trees–as well as pleasure- and beauty-gardens.

Even the gates were astonishing and beautiful. I spent hours wandering around the outer area of the mae and then more time inside, and being a little lost at times. As usual, I founds myself fascinated by the scenery and the buildings but also focused on the very small things. Trees sprouting with other plants. Gingko trees hundreds of years old–and vast in size, much bigger than an I had ever seen. Roof end-tiles. Staking and rope-typing strategies for coaxing wisteria into becoming tree-shaped. Moss and lichens and fungi.

Even buildings with apparently everyday uses were beautiful to my eye–this is an earthen rice storehouse.

How important it must have been to keep rice safe in any year, let alone one in which a siege was possible.

The inner moat had a sloping wall and there were koi (carp) swimming in the moat. Carp are a pest species in Australia. It was so interesting to see them where they belong, have profound cultural and aesthetic meaning and are venerated.

Eventually I decided I needed some downtime and found a teahouse in one of the very splendid formal gardens, where I had an extraordinary dish of fruit with ice cream and bean paste and saw other people eating ‘snow mountain’, which seemed to be shaved ice with syrup poured over it, served in a bowl with a bamboo grate in the bottom, to prevent the whole thing descending into a puddle. There were at least fans in the tea house on this 39C day!

While I was wandering, to my surprise my phone rang, and it was my sister-out-law. I’d posted her a bag I made before we left Australia and it had arrived on her birthday (which I have to admit was a complete accident, and had I tried to arrange it, surely it would have arrived a day before or a day after!)

I was entirely struck, looking at these gardens–by their beauty and by the care that had been lavished on them, in some cases over hundreds of years. There were explanatory signs about specific trees and their lineages. There were accounts of the restoration of buildings and gardens after natural disaster, fire or conflict. But I was also struck by the evidence that they were organised by principles that I have read about but do not understand in any deep way. That they arise from a different attitude to nature and plants, to history and scenery, than any I have ever inhabited. So–a place of mystery in the company of others’ cultures and traditions.

I kept finding myself checking my own assumptions about the cultures from which I’ve arisen. In a place that is so fully fortified it speaks to an expectation of conflict and even war everywhere you turn, there were carvings of peacocks and butterflies that seemed to me so different to anything that might have been associated with warriors in Anglo Australian history. That had me remembering the Wars of the Roses and the association of warring families or tribes in English history with plants and even with flowers.

Near the end of my journey around Nijojo Mae, after I spent a lot of time watching an eagle or hawk gliding over the castle right in the heart of Kyoto, I came upon a tree that had descended from those exposed to the atom bomb, planted here so that it might be remembered in hope of peace.

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In my attempts to research where I should go in Kyoto, I found an intriguing blog post about visiting a needle shop. A needle shop? I was fascinated, sitting at my computer at home and reading about this place.

There was more than one blog post about this place. And how hard it was to find. I attempted the search after a few days in Kyoto in which I had begun to understand the several pedestrian malls in the downtown area and had become, frankly, quite fascinated by the Nishiki Food Markets, which is set on a pedestrian mall. I walked there every day for about five days in a row at one stage, progressively decoding what some of the things for sale were, trying more of them and always returning to a particular mochi stall. But I digress. In my first few days I discovered that Google Maps is quite helpful in Japan, where the conventions for explaining how to find a place or building are different to those I am familiar with. Google maps made light work of finding the secret needle shop of Kyoto. But it was still amazing to walk down a bustling pedestrian mall, find a walkway down the side of a very pink shop (like a dollar shop really), walk down it, through a doorway, and out into a courtyard.

Surely there are prosaic, weedy courtyards somewhere in Kyoto. This wasn’t one of them.

Nestled into it was a small wooden building dwarfed by its bigger modern surroundings.

Stepping stones led up to the door of the Misuyabari needle shop.

It was tiny! Most of the room was taken up by this display of needles, snips, scissors, and all kinds of notions with miniature objects modelled onto them– tiny sculptures, literally on pinheads. (This is the reason for the magnifying glass you see on the counter).

There was also a selection of sewing boxes and mending kits, all exquisitely crafted.

In the end I bought one of these small mending kits… I feel sure it will be the perfect gift at some future moment. And a pack of needles, of course. They came with a brochure about the needle shop and the history of needles in Japan. I spent a lot of time poring over it later with Google translate, which renders Japanese into English in a most poetic way but does allow some insight!

I feel it isn’t every day that a tourist can have an experience that is part magical mystery tour, part practical implement acquisition, and part whimsical cuteness. Highly recommended, and especially as you really must visit the food markets nearby!

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The Lonely Planet Guide did not make the Nishijin Textile Centre sound especially alluring, and nor did some of the promotional materials. I decided to go anyway.

There were some amazing fabrics and garments on display. The display itself was relatively small, though lovely–but the Centre was very popular–and clearly not because of the single room of displays upstairs which I had all to myself. The main attraction seemed to be the souvenir shop, which was full of tourists from all round the world the day I was there. It had a wide range of items made with and decorated in beautiful Japanese fabrics. There was also a working Jacquard loom, with a weaver demonstrating its operation on the main floor of the building, and with some explanatory signage about the long history of interaction between China and Japan in the matter of weaving.

I took just two photos inside the building before seeing the signs banning photography and desisting.

After the Nishijin Textile Centre I went to the Archaeological Museum, just a short walk away. It was a small but impressive place, apparently run by a small group of enthusiasts. Signs were mostly translated into English, which was a boon to me, so I spent a long time reading all I could. I had already been to Nijojo Mae Castle at this point, and so had questions I was trying to answer. The translations here were informative about the archaeology of Kyoto, but they did also suggest some of the ways Japanese and English differ. I puzzled for quite a while over a ceramic object labelled as a “pillow”, wondering how something so small could be a pillow for anyone. Eventually I realised this might be a literal translation of what in English would be a stopper or a lid for a jar or jug.

Next I went to the Aizenkobo Indigo Studio, where master indigo dyer Kenichi Utsuki lives and works. It turned out that I had arrived at a time when he was not dyeing. Rather, I arrived and was the only customer in the studio. Kenichi Utsuki showed me hos beautiful dyeing and the studio, complete with high end fashion garments and special orders hanging on racks. Friends, I was overcome with shyness at having the master dyer (and his wife) attending only to me, and deeply awkward about my lack of Japanese. I tried to explain that I understood that he was an internationally famous dyer and that his work was complex, built on an extensive Japanese tradition (using only Japanese indigo and fermentation methods)–I am not sure that I succeeded in communicating this. But I did spend quite some time with Kenichi Utsuki listening to him about his lifetime’s work and leafing though his photo albums, looking around in awe. Even the house itself was rather amazing and had been in his family for generations. I could not bring myself to ask if I could take photos and so I have only the front door to show you and you will have to follow the link to see more. I came home with a beautiful furoshiki and some sashiko thread dyed virtually black-blue.

Afterward I walked for a long distance. In Kyoto I was forever thinking that I wouldn’t walk as far as yesterday and would just catch a bus because of the heat. but then I was constantly overcome by wanting to see something lying ahead, or wondering what was around the corner. I was forever passing beautiful plants and unfamiliar styles of building. So I just had to keep walking and looking!

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The Japanese wrapping cloth or Furoshiki is sold all over Kyoto as a souvenir and there are simply gorgeous prints available all over central Kyoto. Less often, indigo or other plant dyed furoshiki are available. the furoshiki is the kind of multi purpose staple item surely basic in many cultures where once, having a piece of fabric to use would have been so significant it would have had many uses. The furoshiki is still in use and maybe even having a resurgence in Japan. See one tutorial about how to wrap your lunch box here. I did not see them in use a great deal while in Kyoto, but I did see them being used: most notably one evening when I saw a middle aged man riding his bicycle in a yukata, with two packages the size and shape of framed paintings wrapped in furoshiki in the back basket. I went to one shop several times where the charming and generous woman who was serving in the shop had an extraordinary show and tell, demonstrating how to use furoshiki. She said she had made YouTube videos and I hope this one is her!

One day my friend was trying to explain something she wanted to buy in a chemist and I spent that time roaming around looking at all the things. Wondering over depictions of Japanese manly attractiveness and womanly attractiveness, for instance. Wondering what it is like to live in a place where cosmetics are advertised with pictures which include the good looking young woman whose appearance is being improved by the advertised product (I’m guessing) playing violin (top right image in the right hand photo below).

Imagine my surprise (because a lifetime living in Australia) to discover that in Japan, cleaning your ears doesn’t necessarily involve cotton buds (Q tips). Here are two different models of ear pick. My eyes popped out! But once I knew what they were I realised I was looking at bamboo ear picks as a low price point item in a knife shop. Then I saw them in the museum of traditional arts and crafts, complete with a silky tassel.

Yes, I brought one home. Yes, I’ll be careful.

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I am still in love with this traditional Japanese style of bag. Having acquired Japanese fabric scraps in Japan, I made some more, combining recycled clothing (a red linen shirt from the op shop and a maroon sleeveless linen shirt worn very much by me since the 1990s became linings) with fabric I have dyed with indigo as well as all kinds of Japanese fabric scraps.

I find this design very cunning, and in Japan, I was struck by the different styles that casings tended to take, with drawstrings travelling through casings that were quite separate from the main bag. In the drawstring constructions I more often have encountered and created, the drawstring passes through a casing in the garment or bag itself.

And there it is again. I constantly find myself creating series, and I constantly find myself much more readily making scraps, remnants and recycled fabrics into projects rather than using untouched loveliness in my possession, as if it is too special and valuable to cut, even when it is a gift! I’ll have to work on that, because of course I want people to use the things I gift them!

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I think regular readers will have worked out that there were some obvious reasons I saw textiles everywhere in Japan–after all, I was seeking them out! I must admit though–and I’ve already explained that my ignorance and lack of language are a limitation–that fabric in Kyoto seemed far more accessible than at home. I was really impressed by the range of scrap fabric and recycled fabric available, and the range of places it was for sale. My friend and I bought scrap packs at a high end Shibori store. There were packs of scrap fabrics available on street stalls during the evening street parties that came with the Gion festival. Kimono is a big business in Kyoto and no doubt especially during the Gion festival, when people clearly go out of their way to dress up and dress traditionally, and tourists often do so as well.

This may be one reason that secondhand kimono are for sale in so many places. The amount of silk made into clothing in Japan (relative to Australia) might also account for the availability of bolt ends of kimono silk and for some of the scraps which seem to have been torn off when a hem was raised, for example. But to my ignorant eyes it also seemed there was a different kind of reverence for beautiful fabric and design. During the Gion festival when community treasures are on display, fabulous garments were among them.

When the Gion floats were paraded through the streets, they were hung with amazing, and in some cases, ancient, tapestries and carpets, often imported (long ago and from far away).

Here is another example.

And another! It was amazing! I had been watching some of the floats being assembled out on the streets (remember the temperature is 39C or above every day at this stage), visited them on display once complete and seen the Gion Bayashi musicians rehearsing in them. Then we saw them lifted, pulled or wheeled through the streets on one of the two parade days. To see them all was extraordinary–each with a complex history and a heavy freight of symbols. How hard it must have been to be pulling them through the streets–some of them weighing tonnes and with antique wooden wheels, being kept on track by a wooden chock dextrously applied as the wheels turned, and cornering without steering by use of wet bamboo slats and brute strength. Sweaty work even for the very committed.

But wait, there’s more. I’d researched some things prior to departure and understood Nomura Tailor was not to be missed. The main store was on the big shopping strip of Kyoto (the Rundle Mall of Kyoto for local-to-me readers). It looks small here but there were four, or perhaps five, floors!

I was entirely unsure whether it was acceptable to take photographs, and found myself in someone’s way no matter where I stood on any floor with a small reprieve on the top floor where haberdashery was for sale. I was utterly embarrassed!

Here was for sale every kind of cloth. Every colour of linen. Lots of cute prints (I now understand a little more about the cute aesthetic in Japan, but not a whole lot)! In the image above you can see an entire display of Marimekko. I have never seen so many Liberty prints outside a Liberty store. And so on (remember, this is only what I could recognise). It was overwhelming. I try not to buy new stuff as a general rule–but I really wanted to buy here and could find no way to make a decision about where I would stop if I started. I came back on a second day to see if I had more judgment or perhaps it was less crowded. I still could not bring myself to buy fabric, overwhelmed by how I would ask for it, not understanding how to initiate a purchase, not wanting to hold up the queue, and in general feeling all heffalump in a very organised and efficient space in which I was unable to grasp the key organisational and efficiency principles. I bought some braid, some Japanese zippers and some sashiko sampler packs. The difference between buying fixed items and negotiating yardage is profound, or at least it felt that way to me on the day!

The sashiko samplers turned out to be cushion covers but only the shape of the fabric and the pictures with the Japanese instructions inside allowed me to work this out. I became ill a week or so after returning and did a lot of stitching!

None of these was the highlight for me. The highlight really was going to a shrine sale the day we left. We went to the flea market, and it was immense. It was not a fabric sale–pottery, tools, metal, ready to eat food, brushware, vegetables, pickles… just abut everything! It was over 40C that day and I inhabited a fantasy that I could look around and come back to things sighted earlier. Oops! That is one thing I do regret. Here was every kind of fabric, new and second hand. New garments and second hand garments. Second hand sake bags.

Sacking, advertising materials on fabric (as far as I could tell). Cheap mass produced stuff. I bought what turned out to be strips from the ends of bolts (lengths?) of white silk kimono fabric. Then there were so many second hand fabrics whose origins I could only guess.

There were plant dyed clothes, and while indigo was prominent some were dyed with nettles, cedar bark or wormwood (that is what I could understand at any rate–)

There was vintage clothing and fabric in every stage from well preserved to utterly disintegrating and in every stage of being mended from a patch here or there to rags stitched together–the boro tradition. There were also many stallholders converting scraps of beautiful silk or vintage indigo dyed fabric into small items of loveliness, honouring them by transforming them.

I have read about boro and seen images, and read its history. But while some of these items spoke of thrift and long wear, some were so ragged and so much mended that I was confronted by a sense of grief and awe for the people whose suffering and resilience created these clothes and cloths. While they now sell for a good deal of money (which does not go to anyone who used them), these items speak of the sheer poverty and difficult lives as well as speaking of the diligence, skill, love and care that must have gone into them.

In the end, I felt as though the flea market was an education in the life of everyday people through textiles. The museums I visited focused on things of high quality and amazing craft and design skill (as museums often do). Yet, this means museums often tell the stories of the wealthy and powerful, even when it is their clothing that is on show. At the flea market, the incredible effort that went into staying warm and covered for so many people who made that wealth possible was on show instead.

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In addition to the sock, I took some fat, soft handspun to convert into beanies in Japan, in case I needed a change of knitting pace.

The beanies were a hotel knitting project. There had been floods and an earthquake before we arrived, and Kyoto sweltered through an uncharacteristic heatwave while we were there: 39C or more virtually every day. This was knitting for air conditioning!

These are made from some naturally coloured Western Australian Polwarth roving Joyce left. It was sumptuous to spin and lovely to knit.

These are knit from hand spun, eucalyptus dyed wool. And some more Polwarth! I can’t shake the feeling there was a third orange-brown hat but if so, I did not take a picture. But I have certainly made a head start on next winter’s beanies…